Chatbots are writing sci-fi stories, and let's just say they're not exactly boldly going

where no man has gone before.

From American public media, this is Marketplace Tech.

I'm Megan McCarty-Karino.

It's so meta, right?

A tool seemingly straight out of science fiction, writing its own science fiction.

But it's not all fun and games for the online magazine Clarks World, which publishes short

fiction sent in by writers in the sci-fi and fantasy community.

The publication typically pays $0.12 per word for chosen stories.

But the magazine's editor, Neil Clark, announced last month, they're closing submissions

down because they've been inundated with material generated by AI and sent in by people

looking to make a quick buck.

Clark told me this all began in December when they noticed about 50 stories that seemed

to be written by AI.

In January, that number doubled, and by the first 20 days of February, they'd received

more than 500 AI-generated submissions.

So we were on track to have one of these types of submissions for every one of the legitimate

submissions we were getting.

One to one.

One to one.

And we weren't seeing any sign of it slowing, so probably we've gotten worse.

Best we can tell, these are largely coming in from people who are following side hustle

...